UK Parliamentary by-elections, 2015 onwards (also devolved legislatures)

[136or142]

Is Jeremy Corbyn a Conservative Party fifth column?

[vileplume]

He's spot on when he says UKIP targeting Labour is laughable, and pretty much trying to copy the SNP.

In order for UKIP to compete in White Working Class Labour seats in the North and Midlands they would have to squeeze the Conservative vote in these places to within an inch of its life but with the Tories doing as well as they are nationally that is simply not going to happen without UKIP running in a excellent targeted campaign (which they are very bad at). If UKIP had a good local candidate in Stoke Central and ran a strong campaign it is very possible Tory voters would have crossed over and backed them which would have been enough for them to defeat Labour.

[MAINEiac4434]

What's the reason for Labour's abysmal performance in these by-elections and their national polling? Is it simply the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn? Or are there more significant factors?

People really hate Jeremy Corbyn. He might be the most unpopular political figure in Britain right now.

[Tintrlvr]

What's the reason for Labour's abysmal performance in these by-elections and their national polling? Is it simply the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn? Or are there more significant factors?

Corbyn is an extremely incompetent leader. From a policy perspective, he's also somewhat out of step with mainstream Britain, but that alone wouldn't necessarily be enough to cause Labour to lose seats like Copeland. The real problem is that Labour under his leadership has been an organizational disaster, flailing from one crisis to the next and blaming all of their problems on "Blairites," never mind that Tony Blair left office a full decade ago. Corbyn's supporters are worse than the man himself and focused on internal party score-settling against perceived enemies (mainly those evil center-leftist traitors) and purity rituals over any serious effort to win over voters, and Corbyn has demonstrated no interest whatsoever in trying to bring them to heel. It certainly doesn't help that Labour is the only party that hasn't been able to come up with a semi-cogent position (or any position at all, really) on Brexit, which continues to be the issue du jour, even though in theory Brexit should be at least as tough for the Tories to navigate as Labour (but May is reasonably competent and the party not busy with internal feuding).

[Phony Moderate]

What's the reason for Labour's abysmal performance in these by-elections and their national polling? Is it simply the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn? Or are there more significant factors?

People really hate Jeremy Corbyn. He might be the most unpopular political figure in Britain right now.

Nah, he's not hated, he's just not seen as being any good for the most part.

[bore]

Nice to see the left-wing commie biased BBC ignoring Copeland and focusing almost entirely on Nuttall going down in Stoke...oh wait, they are focusing on Copeland.

This is the correct angle, though. The Official Opposition to a second term government is completely unraveling and has just lost a seat they've held for 80 years on a massive swing. There is no bigger story.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Arguably it would be a bigger snub to Labour if they had ignored what is likely to be a big internal crisis to focus on internal tensions within a party with one MP.

[vileplume]

What's the reason for Labour's abysmal performance in these by-elections and their national polling? Is it simply the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn? Or are there more significant factors?

People really hate Jeremy Corbyn. He might be the most unpopular political figure in Britain right now.

Yeah here is a poll from YouGov about Corbyn's favourability (http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/xrkkkidqmc/InternalResults_170203_Favourability_W.pdf):

Net: -40

Remain: -24
Leave: -61

Tory: -74
Labour: -2 (lol!)
Lib Dem: -50
UKIP: -69

Male: -46
Female: -34

18-24: -1
25-39: -31
40-64: -46
65+: -68

ABC1: -40
C2DE: -40 (this is the working class traditionally Labour's base)

London: -37
Rest of South: -44
Midlands/Wales: -40
North: -35
Scotland: -37

For comparison he's Theresa May's approval rating in the same poll:

Net: +6 (+46 on Corbyn) -Fairly impressive for a politician to be in net positive territory.

Remain: -29 (-5 on Corbyn)
Leave: +42 (+103! on Corbyn)

Tory: +63 (+137 on Corbyn)
Labour: -44 (-42 on Corbyn)
Lib Dem: -13 (+37 on Corbyn)
UKIP: +41 (+110! on Corbyn)

Male: +4 (+50 on Corbyn)
Female: +8 (+42 on Corbyn)

18-24: -24 (-23 on Corbyn)
25-39: -11 (+20 on Corbyn)
40-64: +14 (+60 on Corbyn)
65+: +45 (+113! on Corbyn)

ABC1: +1 (+41 on Corbyn)
C2DE: +12 (+52! on Corbyn)

London: -3 (+34 on Corbyn)
Rest of South: +22 (+66 on Corbyn)
Midlands/Wales: +7 (+47 on Corbyn)
North: +/- 0 (+35 on Corbyn)
Scotland: -28 (+9! on Corbyn)

Corbyn is also damaging the Labour brand which is traditionally a strong one, much more so than the Tories. In this poll Labour is at net -29 while the Tories are at -10 and as someone said on the Daily Politics today the longer Corbyn is Labour leader the more damage is done to the party's reputation which will be progressively more difficult and take substantially longer to reverse the longer he is in place.

[Intell]

Targeting Remain voters, as a thing would be exclusively horrible idea for labour, and would contribute to the rise in UKIP, and since I'd prefer a rise of the lib dem vote from labour, than a UKIP vote from labour, the labour party needs to target labour voters in general, regardless of if they voted remain or leave, as well as a focus especially on the working class labour vote, who predominantly voted to leave. If you want to lose working class votes to UKIP, you can of course target europhiles.

Non-Voting from traditional labour voters, as well as UKIP voters voting for tories, is what lost than Copeland, rather than the GREAT EMERGING LIB DEM VOTE, that filled the comment section of The Guardian.

Ftr, I wouldn't mind replacing Corbyn, if a credible challenge (aka not like Owen Smith), emerges, and hopefully based on a challenger that has working class roots, and can recognise and adress their concerns, as a labour party,

[Phony Moderate]

Yeah, his ratings are pretty terrible, but I don't get the impression that people actively hate him. Although Labour might actually be better off with a leader that millions of people hate.

Ftr, I wouldn't mind replacing Corbyn, if a credible challenge (aka not like Owen Smith), emerges, and hopefully based on a challenger that has working class roots, and can recognise and adress their concerns, as a labour party,

Ah yeah, Owen Smith. That guy who managed to take a more dovish position on terrorism than Jeremy Corbyn.

[136or142]

What's the reason for Labour's abysmal performance in these by-elections and their national polling? Is it simply the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn? Or are there more significant factors?

Corbyn is an extremely incompetent leader. From a policy perspective, he's also somewhat out of step with mainstream Britain, but that alone wouldn't necessarily be enough to cause Labour to lose seats like Copeland. The real problem is that Labour under his leadership has been an organizational disaster, flailing from one crisis to the next and blaming all of their problems on "Blairites," never mind that Tony Blair left office a full decade ago. Corbyn's supporters are worse than the man himself and focused on internal party score-settling against perceived enemies (mainly those evil center-leftist traitors) and purity rituals over any serious effort to win over voters, and Corbyn has demonstrated no interest whatsoever in trying to bring them to heel.

The first time I heard Jeremy Corbyn he was both going on about the importance of addressing global warming (fine) and that some coal mines in the U.K maybe should be re-opened  (oh dear) and I wondered if his main concern was with settling scores with Margaret Thatcher from 30 years ago.

[Intell]

-29 Opinion for Labour among the upper/middle-classes
-31 Opinion for Labour for the working class

This is just sad.

Opinion of Theresa May higher among the working class than than the upper/middle classes, also sad.

----------

Opinion of Stuff by Class


Opinion on leaving the EU:

ABC1: (-14)
C2DE: (+27)

Opinion on the EU:

ABC1: (+1)
C2DE: (-33)

Opinion of Donald Trump:

ABC1: (-60)
C2DE: (-38)

Opinion of Vladimir Putin:

ABC1: (-71)
C2DE: (-55)

Opinion of Angela Merkel:

ABC1: (+4)
C2DE: (-23)

Opinion of the Conservative Party:

ABC1: (-8)
C2DE: (-11)

Opinion of the Labour Party:

ABC1: (-29)
C2DE: (-31)

Opinion of the Liberal Democrats:

ABC1: (-19)
C2DE: (-41)

Opinion of UKIP:

ABC1: (-50)
C2DE: (-15)

Opinion of the Green Party:

ABC1: (+4)
C2DE: (-8)

Opinion of Theresa May:

ABC1: (+1)
C2DE: (+14)

Opinion of Boris Johnson:

ABC1: (-13)
C2DE: (+2)

Opinion of David Davis:

ABC1: (-13)
C2DE: (+3)

Opinion of Jeremy Corbyn:


ABC1: (-40)
C2DE: (-40)

Opinion of Keir Starmer:

ABC1: (-9)
C2DE: (-12)

Opinion of Tim Farron:


ABC1: (-15)
C2DE: (-24)

Opinion of Paul Nuttal:


ABC1: (-28)
C2DE: (-17)

I am skeptical of some of the results.

[Blair]

The interesting thing is that Copeland had a lot of Labour-Tory switchers, who were screaming that they were doing it as a protest against Corbyn. A seat that voted for Miliband in 2015 is generally (outside of metro areas) a sign that the traditional Labour vote will put up with anything, but with Corbyn there really is just a general feeling he needs to go.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/24/the-view-from-copeland-lifelong-labour-voters-want-corbyn-out

[vileplume]

The interesting thing is that Copeland had a lot of Labour-Tory switchers, who were screaming that they were doing it as a protest against Corbyn. A seat that voted for Miliband in 2015 is generally (outside of metro areas) a sign that the traditional Labour vote will put up with anything, but with Corbyn there really is just a general feeling he needs to go.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/24/the-view-from-copeland-lifelong-labour-voters-want-corbyn-out

The main reason Labour lost so badly was that UKIP's vote collapsed to the Tories. This is what happened in national polling too as UKIP fell sharply after the referendum and May replacing Cameron as PM the Tory vote rose by a similar amount, look at the polling graph the decline in the UKIP vote and the rise of the Tory share mirror each other. Labour's decline has been more steady , losing votes presumably the Tories and the Lib Dems. It has carried on getting worse since Corbyn was re-elected leader showing that the argument that the PLP is responsible for the state Labour is in is rubbish.

If the UKIP vote collapses to the Tories in provincial England the way it did in Copeland Labour should brace themselves for very heavy losses. In order to counteract this Labour needs a leader that can take votes directly from the Tories and that is obviously not going to be Comrade Corbyn.

Polling graph for the 2020 election:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

[Phony Moderate]

The Tories got less votes in Copeland on Thursday than they did in 2015. As I said before, abstention was probably the biggest issue for Labour - there's a sense of gloom starting at the PLP and going right down to the Labour-sympathetic part of the electorate.

Anyway, the BBC's weird obsession with the prettier Miliband brother continues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39085859

This would be news if he had ever expressed the slightest sympathy for Corbynism...which he hasn't. Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Len McCluskey or even the uglier Miliband brother making similar comments would count as news but this doesn't. Frankly if the prettier Miliband brother didn't have the political nous to win a leadership election then I highly doubt he'd have come close to beating David Cameron. Blair, of course, did have the nous to do so and won it big in 1994.

[vileplume]

The Tories got less votes in Copeland on Thursday than they did in 2015. As I said before, abstention was probably the biggest issue for Labour - there's a sense of gloom starting at the PLP and going right down to the Labour-sympathetic part of the electorate.

Well they only a got a few hundred less which is an extremely good performance for a by-
election. You can't seriously be suggesting that every voter that voted Tory in 2015 turned out and they didn't gain any voters from elsewhere... It is pretty clear that the Tories gained heavily at the expense of UKIP which is why they won (look at national polling if you don't believe me). As for Labour sure some of their voters sat home but probably not a particularly different proportion to the amount of 2015 Tory voters who didn't vote.

If a general election were held next week Labour would lose Copeland by even more than they did at the by-election probably by more than 10%. Governments always perform better in general elections than by-elections, the hospital which certainly helped Labour to an extent here would not be an issue as the public would be focussed on national issues and the potential of Corbyn becoming prime minister would be near top of the public's concerns (I'm sure all the skeletons in his closet e.g. the IRA will be raked up too). Unless something drastic changes Labour is on course to sustain very heavy losses to the Tories in 2020 with far safer seats than Copeland falling.

If the Tories had squeezed into second in Stoke-on-Trent Central in 2015 and the media hadn't blown the whole thing up as Lab vs UKIP the Tories could well have run Labour very dangerously close there too by squeezing UKIP.

[vileplume]

Labour will probably perform best in at the next election in places where there is very little 2015 UKIP vote to speak of (the Tories main pool of new voters). For example Labour would probably stand a chance at holding Hampstead and Kilburn (Tory target seat 11) even in a nationwide meltdown for example. Anywhere with large Green votes should deliver reasonable performances too, though unfortunately for them the Green vote is very low in most Con-Lab marginals.

[Phony Moderate]

Well they only a got a few hundred less which is an extremely good performance for a by-
election. You can't seriously be suggesting that every voter that voted Tory in 2015 turned out and they didn't gain any voters from elsewhere... It is pretty clear that the Tories gained heavily at the expense of UKIP which is why they won (look at national polling if you don't believe me). As for Labour sure some of their voters sat home but probably not a particularly different proportion to the amount of 2015 Tory voters who didn't vote.

I wasn't suggesting that, but to go down by over 5,000 is highly unusual (and poor) for an opposition party in a by-election. Though admittedly if you add 3,000 to the Labour total (i.e. enough for victory) it would have entailed an unusual high turnout for a by-election.

Labour will probably perform best in at the next election in places where there is very little 2015 UKIP vote to speak of (the Tories main pool of new voters). For example Labour would probably stand a chance at holding Hampstead and Kilburn (Tory target seat 11) even in a nationwide meltdown for example. Anywhere with large Green votes should deliver reasonable performances too, though unfortunately for them the Green vote is very low in most Con-Lab marginals.

The worst thing from Labour's POV is that (as things stand) the marginals of the Midlands and certain parts of the North will swing even further to the Tories - and of course they already swung pretty heavily to them in both 2010 and 2015. Nuneaton (now seen as the quintessential Lab-Con marginal) could deliver a five-figure Tory majority for example.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If the Tories had squeezed into second in Stoke-on-Trent Central in 2015 and the media hadn't blown the whole thing up as Lab vs UKIP the Tories could well have run Labour very dangerously close there too by squeezing UKIP.

Hahahaha. No.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Amusing: Team Corbyn have highlighted the nuclear issue as an excuse for the result. It's undeniably a reason - the local economy is dominated by Sellafield (which is why it is a prosperous area with a high average income) and there are proposals for a new power station etc - but is the very opposite of an excuse as one Corbyn, J. gave a trainwreck interview in which he indicated that he does not support civil nuclear power, which I gather got rather a lot of attention in the constituency. If you want to know why it was a 2k majority rather than one of 200 or so, well...

[Hnv1]

Well they only a got a few hundred less which is an extremely good performance for a by-
election. You can't seriously be suggesting that every voter that voted Tory in 2015 turned out and they didn't gain any voters from elsewhere... It is pretty clear that the Tories gained heavily at the expense of UKIP which is why they won (look at national polling if you don't believe me). As for Labour sure some of their voters sat home but probably not a particularly different proportion to the amount of 2015 Tory voters who didn't vote.

I wasn't suggesting that, but to go down by over 5,000 is highly unusual (and poor) for an opposition party in a by-election. Though admittedly if you add 3,000 to the Labour total (i.e. enough for victory) it would have entailed an unusual high turnout for a by-election.

Labour will probably perform best in at the next election in places where there is very little 2015 UKIP vote to speak of (the Tories main pool of new voters). For example Labour would probably stand a chance at holding Hampstead and Kilburn (Tory target seat 11) even in a nationwide meltdown for example. Anywhere with large Green votes should deliver reasonable performances too, though unfortunately for them the Green vote is very low in most Con-Lab marginals.

The worst thing from Labour's POV is that (as things stand) the marginals of the Midlands and certain parts of the North will swing even further to the Tories - and of course they already swung pretty heavily to them in both 2010 and 2015. Nuneaton (now seen as the quintessential Lab-Con marginal) could deliver a five-figure Tory majority for example.

To make things even worse I think Lab look certain to lose up to 7 safe seats in Wales, I had a vacation in northern Wales\Flintshire during the summer and the locals (who are traditional Labour) were far from keen on Corbyn.  I could see a wipe out of all 4 seats up north and some of the seats in the south.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Labour will probably perform best in at the next election in places where there is very little 2015 UKIP vote to speak of (the Tories main pool of new voters). For example Labour would probably stand a chance at holding Hampstead and Kilburn (Tory target seat 11) even in a nationwide meltdown for example. Anywhere with large Green votes should deliver reasonable performances too, though unfortunately for them the Green vote is very low in most Con-Lab marginals.

You underestimate how much support has been lost as a result of the stance Corbyn has taken over Brexit. It's... um... bad.

[parochial boy]

What exactly is Corbyn and his crowd hoping for at this point in time? I mean, it clearly ain't working; and if the polling figures Vileplume posted about the labour brand are correct, then he is doing some serious damage to the party long term.

Obviously, sticking D Milliband in charge isn't going to save things overnight, but Corbyn as at a point where he is even damaging the radical left with his incompetence.

[Lord Halifax]

Labour will probably perform best in at the next election in places where there is very little 2015 UKIP vote to speak of (the Tories main pool of new voters). For example Labour would probably stand a chance at holding Hampstead and Kilburn (Tory target seat 11) even in a nationwide meltdown for example. Anywhere with large Green votes should deliver reasonable performances too, though unfortunately for them the Green vote is very low in most Con-Lab marginals.

You underestimate how much support has been lost as a result of the stance Corbyn has taken over Brexit. It's... um... bad.

What exactly is Corbyn's stance on Brexit? He doesn't really seem to have one.

[Hnv1]

Labour will probably perform best in at the next election in places where there is very little 2015 UKIP vote to speak of (the Tories main pool of new voters). For example Labour would probably stand a chance at holding Hampstead and Kilburn (Tory target seat 11) even in a nationwide meltdown for example. Anywhere with large Green votes should deliver reasonable performances too, though unfortunately for them the Green vote is very low in most Con-Lab marginals.

You underestimate how much support has been lost as a result of the stance Corbyn has taken over Brexit. It's... um... bad.

What exactly is Corbyn's stance on Brexit? He doesn't really seem to have one.

That the NHS must be saved